The film Oppenheimer, which deals with the biography of the famous physicist who led the United States to develop the first atomic bomb during World War II, dominated the Oscars in the 2024 edition, while the 96th ceremony, which was held in the American state of California, witnessed a surprising presence of the Israeli war on Gaza, International stars criticized the war and demanded a ceasefire.
Oppenheimer won the Best Picture award, and its American-British director, Christopher Nolan, won the Directing Award, while the Irishman Cillian Murphy won the Best Actor award, in addition to the American Robert Downey Jr., who won the Best Supporting Actor award.
American actress Emma Stone won the second Oscar in her career, after winning the Best Actress award for the movie Poor Things, a black comedy that tells the story of a woman who returns to life from the dead. Stone (35 years old) won the award for the first time for her role in the movie “La La Land” in 2016.
D’Avayne Joy Randolph also won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her role in the movie The Holdovers, as a boarding school cafeteria manager who is drowning in grief due to the loss of her son in the Vietnam War.
Thanks to this work signed by director Alexander Payne, Randolph defeated her strong competitors, Jodie Foster NYAD, America Ferrera Barbie, Emily Blunt Oppenheimer, and Danielle Brooks The Color Purple.
This is the first Oscar for the 37-year-old actress, who starred in The Holdovers, a Christmas story by Alexander Payne, in which she plays Mary Lamb, a mourning African-American cook at an upscale New England high school.
Despised or ignored by most of the students, she finds herself stuck on New Year’s Eve with a strict history teacher (Paul Giamatti) and a vulnerable teenager (Dominic Sessa), and an unlikely friendship develops between them.
The British film Zone of Interest, which deals with the “Holocaust” during the Nazi era in Germany, won the Academy Award this year as best foreign feature film.
The film tells the story of a German officer and his family who live next to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland during World War II.
During a speech he gave after receiving the award, the film’s director, Jonathan Glazer, denounced the “dehumanization” of Palestinian victims in the war launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip, and the attack launched by Hamas on October 7.
Jewish director Jonathan Glazer said, “The (Israeli) occupation hijacked the Holocaust and caused the killing of many innocent people” in Gaza.
As for the French film Anatomie d’une chute (Anatomy of a Fall), it won the Oscar for best original screenplay, after winning the Palme d’Or last year at the Cannes Film Festival. The film’s director, Justine Trier, shared the Oscar with her companion Artur Harari, with whom she wrote the script during the coronavirus pandemic. The work provides a striking judicial account of a trial in which a writer finds herself accused of killing her husband.
Miyazaki wins his second Oscar
The famous Japanese animation director, Hayao Miyazaki, also won his second Oscar, for his film The Boy and the Heron, the first work of the Ghibli Studios founder in a decade, and perhaps his last. Miyazaki was not present in Los Angeles to receive the award.
This film, about a boy who moves to the countryside during World War II, won the award for best animated film, the same award that was won by Miyazaki’s 2003 film Spirited Away.
Like other Studio Ghibli films, The Boy and the Heron offers viewers a visual adventure in which mysterious creatures and strange characters wander through a fantasy world.
After his mother dies in the bombing of Tokyo during World War II, the boy, Mahito, struggles to accept his new life with his father and his pregnant stepmother, from whom he loses track of. Everything changes when Mahito meets a talking heron, and embarks on a journey to an alternate world shared by the living and the dead.
In a Japanese explanation of the film, whose original title translates as “How Do You Live?”, Miyazaki said that the film’s rural setting was “created mainly from my memory.”
Miyazaki, 83, also lived in a large country house during the war. Although he did not intend to write an autobiography, the father figure in the film “is very similar to my father,” he says.
Winning the Oscar again may encourage Miyazaki to delay stopping his artistic career, after he previously announced his retirement before returning to work with this film.
The work outperformed major competing films, such as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Disney’s Elemental, Netflix’s Nimona, and Robot Dreams, which lacks any dialogue.
Oppenheimer dominance
Oppenheimer’s film, which had the lion’s share of the 2024 Oscars, having been nominated for 13 awards, is a 3-hour historical drama that dealt with science and politics, and achieved unexpected success at the box office, with revenues amounting to $953.8 million, in addition to receiving praise. Wide range of critics.
In addition to the awards for directing and acting, American actor Robert Downey Jr. won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in the movie Oppenheimer, in which he plays an evil bureaucrat who seeks to eliminate the famous physicist.
Downey played Louis Strauss, the former head of the US Atomic Energy Commission, who launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to strip J. Robert Oppenheimer of his security clearance by accusing him of being a communist.
Critics praised Downey for playing a role that was opposite to his character in the films. Downey is famous for his appearance in many films as the Marvel superhero Iron Man.
Downey was considered the most likely candidate for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, after he won Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards for his starring role.
The American actor received his first Oscar nomination for his role as Charlie Chaplin in the movie Chaplin in 1992. After a series of scandals and addictions, he received a second nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the satirical war film Tropic Thunder.
Nolan also wrote the screenplay for Oppenheimer, and produced the film with his wife, Emma Thomas.
The scientist Oppenheimer headed the secret Los Alamos laboratory, which was established during the era of US President Franklin Roosevelt, as part of the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb. He supervised the first detonation of the atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert, which he code-named “Trinity,” before these bombs were used to bomb the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Irishman Cillian Murphy, who on Sunday won the first Oscar in his artistic career, for his role in the film, played the role of the famous physicist who led the United States to develop the first atomic bomb during World War II.
The win caps a successful season for the 47-year-old Irish actor, who also won a Golden Globe, BAFTA and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance.
Murphy, who lives in Ireland and stays away from the Hollywood spotlight, has played his biggest role yet in Oppenheimer. He previously played leading roles in the films 28 Days Later, the Peaky Blinders series, the Batman film Dark Knight, and also Inception.
British-American director Christopher Nolan also won the first Academy Awards in his artistic career, by winning the Best Director award for the historical drama film, but he also won Best Director awards for the film at the Golden Globe and BAFTA, in addition to the Critics’ Choice and the Directors Guild of America’s Choice Awards. .
Nolan also wrote Oppenheimer’s screenplay and produced the film with his wife, Emma Thomas.
“Oppenheimer’s story is one of the most dramatic stories I know, and there are many aspects that make it very compelling,” Nolan told Reuters.
Nolan is famous for his exciting films, and was nominated for the first time for the Academy Award for Best Screenplay in 2002 for the film Memento, which he also directed. He was nominated for the 2019 Best Director award for his World War II film Dunkirk.
Attending the Gaza war
The film The Zone of Interest, which won the Best Foreign Film award, tells the story of a German officer and his family who live next to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland during World War II.
During a speech he delivered after receiving the award, Jewish film director Jonathan Glazer denounced the “dehumanization” of Palestinian victims in the war launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip, and the attack launched by Hamas on October 7.
Jonathan Glazer, who previously directed the films Sexy Beast and Under the Skin, said, “The (Israeli) occupation hijacked the Holocaust, and caused the killing of many innocent people” in Gaza.
The film also won a major award at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, but it was also nominated for the 2024 Academy Award as Best Picture and Best Director.
The Israeli war on Gaza, which broke out last October, and claimed the lives of more than 31,000 Palestinians, 70% of whom were women and children, had a presence at the ceremony, as many “Seventh Art” stars and celebrities appeared on the red carpet at the Academy Awards ceremony. The 96th, wearing red pins in support of the ceasefire.
American singer and songwriter Billie Eilish, American director and writer Ava DuVernay, American actor Mark Ruffalo, Egyptian-American actor Ramy Youssef, actor Mahershala Ali, and model and actress Quanna Chasinghorse wore red pins to support the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
These pins were provided by Artists4Ceasefire, a group of celebrities and members of the entertainment industry who signed an open letter urging US President Joe Biden to call for a ceasefire. Among the 400 signatories are Bradley Cooper and America Ferrera, both of whom were nominated for Oscars this year, in addition to Cate Blanchett, Drake and Jennifer Lopez, according to the newspaper.The New York Times“American.
“The pin symbolizes collective support for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the release of all detainees and the delivery of urgent humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza,” Artists4Ceasefire said in a statement. “Mercy must prevail,” the statement added.
The pin resembles a quarter dollar painted in red, and bears the image of a hand surrounding a small black heart.
“We all call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza,” Ramy Youssef, whose film Poor Things won the Best Actress award, which went to Emma Stone, said on the red carpet before the ceremony, adding: “We really want lasting justice and peace for the Palestinian people.”
He continued: “We really want to say, let’s stop killing children. There is a lot that needs to be addressed, and it seems that the easiest way to have the conversations that people want to have is when you are not under a bombing campaign going on.”
Complete list of Oscars 2024 winners
* the best movie: Oppenheimer
* Best Actor: Cillian Murphy for a movie Oppenheimer
* Best Actress: Emma Stone for a movie Poor things
* Best Director: Christopher Nolan for a film Oppenheimer
* Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey Jr. for a movie Oppenheimer
*Best Supporting Actress: Divine Joy Randolph, in a movie The Holdovers
* Best Adapted Screenplay: American Fiction
*Best Original Screenplay: Anatomy of a fall
*Best Animated Film: The Boy and the Heron
*Best animated short film: War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko
* Best foreign film: The Zone of Interest
* Best Documentary Film: 20 Days in Mariupol
* better Short documentary: The Last Repair Shop
bettersoundtrack: Oppenheimer
* Best original song: What Was I Made For? From a movie Barbie
*Best sound: The Zone of Interest
*Best Production Design: Poor things
*Best short film: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
*Best Cinematography: Oppenheimer
*Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Poor things
* Best Fashion: Poor things
* Best visual effects: Godzilla Minus One 2023
*Best Editing: Oppenheimer